Eorzea seems to be pretty quiet these days. There are not a lot of people online including our Free Company. Even as a healer when I tried to queue up for dungeons and raids the waiting time has become unconventionally long.
It has been some time since the last patch dropped so it is natural for the new patch rush to drop off. It seems a number of players have run out of contents to keep themselves interested. With some big games like Uncharted 4 launching and Overwatch went into beta, it is not surprising that a number of people are taking a break from Eorzea.
I still log on regularly and I still have things to do regularly but then nothing is too exciting for me at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I can still entertain myself as I still have a lot of things I want to do and can do, but as for what we called the “Dailies” I don’t do them religiously after I capped my tomes for the week. Even for Alexander normal, the Random Number Generator (RNG) factor to roll for specific pieces of drops seemed to have taken the toll. For the raiders the raid scene that I know of seemed to have died down quite a bit. I do not know the reason behind this but then it seems currently Alexander raid groups are not as active as I thought they would be.
But for non-raiders like me the land of Eorzea is about living a daily life by doing our dailies. Well at least it used to be. One of the reasons I don’t do what we called the Duty Roulette Expert religiously anymore is because I got quite bored with it. The new dungeons were quite interesting when they first came out – the whole understanding the mechanics, dealing with enemies that are higher level than you are and figuring out how to survive boss fights etc. etc. That was all exciting back then as the thrill of surviving and completing was real. However as you geared up and got familiar with the dungeons, they become less interesting. The situation got even more off putting when you start to have players trying to just speed run everything just to “get things over with”, whether they are able to do so or not. This is a sign of doing things in the game became chores for players.
In the time of A Realm Reborn (ARR), when every patch introduced three new dungeons things were a bit better. Doing the roulette means you have one in three chances of getting the same dungeon, it added a bit of roulette feel. Also it still stayed a bit more interesting as you are not doing the same dungeon day after day again every day most of the time. However since Heavensward (HW), Square Enix had changed the number of Expert roulette dungeons to two. This means you have one in two chances of getting the same dungeon. The fact is for me it feels that one of the dungeons just kept on showing up more regularly than the other. Sometimes I can have the same dungeon 7 days in a roll that I just couldn’t help but felt extremely bored.
I do not know why Square Enix made the decision to change this but for me this is a huge let down. The success of ARR had atoned the mess the original Final Fantasy XIV brought to the franchise. In one of the ARR anniversary events they even had a side quest to apologise to the players about the arrogance they had in the past. However, what they were doing here in HW seemed to be completely working in the opposite direction of ARR. While other aspects seemed to be a result of wavering and adjusting to players’ demands and then got themselves nowhere, the reduction of three dungeons to two dungeons seemed to be entirely Square Enix’s executive decision.
I am not a developer so I do not know how hard it is to build an additional dungeon for the Expert roulette, but what I thought was if it was possible in ARR why it is not possible in HW? What happened between the original game and the expansion that Square Enix had decided to reduce the number of new dungeons with each patch? Did they run out of lore for tie-ins (yes all the previous dungeons represented side quests and side stories in the world of Eorzea). For me side quests and side dungeons are great opportunities to open the world further. What about telling us more about the background of the Au Ra race through a new dungeon? Then the world of Eorzea can be expanded further and at the same time keeping us interested in the dungeons.
Maybe I am really asking too much but sometimes I did feel like if I am paying the same subscription fee and a year ago I got more contents with every new patch that matters than now, is it a form of cheating from Square Enix? I do not know what direction the game is currently going. Certainly it still has a great story and some interesting contents but if the basics for most of the players are shrinking is Square Enix slowly developing sink holes in Eorzea? That only time could tell.
